Getting off was not easy. She had swung, and her cable, sweeping the bottom, had fouled the anchor. They hove all on board in a horrible tangle, and for hours the barefooted crew were occupied in dragging the ponderous links about. In the meantime _Mossamedes_ steamed slowly south, with a yellow smear on her port hand that stood for the coast. The shallows run far to sea, and the charts are not remarkably good. Yusuf had sent her to load sheep at the mouth of a wady, but stated that she might wait some days before the animals arrived.
Miguel, the old quartermaster, steered her in. He had long sailed on board a fishing schooner and knew the shoals, for where the African coast-shelf drops to the deep Atlantic, fish are numerous. Fish, lightly salted and dried in the sun, make the Spanish _baccalao_, and the _peons_, whose main food it is, are sometimes touched by leprosy. Miguel never wore boots and stockings, although when he went home on feast days he carried raw-hide sandals. Kit rather doubted if he put the sandals on. His clothes were strangely patched, and he could not read, but his manners were the manners of a Spanish grandee. He was something of a mystic and believed in miracles. He told Kit the Moors were cruel and treacherous, but his saint was king of angels, and he was not afraid. The mate was a Catalan Freethinker, and believed in nothing he could not touch and see. Since he wore spectacles, his vision was limited.
When they reached the spot agreed upon, Miguel went to the bridge, and they rigged the deep-sea lead and stopped the ship. Miguel, posed like a Greek statue, stood on top of the pilot-house; his thin clothes wind-pressed against his body, and his white hair blown about his red cap. There were no shore marks, and Don Erminio's reckoning was not always accurate. Across a belt of blue sea one saw a brown and yellow streak. Its outline was vague and broken; only the colour was distinct.
"The _Punta_!" said Miguel. "The _barranco_ is a league south. A bad place, captain, and the people are without shame."
Kit knew _barranco_ in Castilian and _wady_ in Arabic mean a stony hollow where water sometimes flows. He looked for an anchorage, but saw none. In places, the belt of blue was broken by patches of pale green, and farther on, by glistening white lines. These marked ridges on the coast-shelf and shallow spots where the long rollers broke. The wind was fresh but blew obliquely off the coast.